


unImpressed

by Ladymordecai



Category: Dragonriders of Pern - Anne McCaffrey
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-18
Updated: 2012-05-18
Packaged: 2017-11-05 13:42:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,175
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/407084
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ladymordecai/pseuds/Ladymordecai
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Evolution.</p>
            </blockquote>





	unImpressed

Jalanna, junior queen's rider at Ista Weyr four centuries after the Last Fall, has a secret.  
  
When Jalanna stood on the hot hatching grounds that day with the other girls and boys, waiting while hungry dragonets found their partners, she watched the golden queen's egg covetously.  To keep dragon numbers down to a manageable level, queens were still the only dragons allowed to breed--their green counterparts deliberately rendered sterile--and thus of all the old hierarchies, this still held.  Queen's riders wielded unmatched power.  
  
After a childhood spent scrubbing pots, fetching and carrying, with as little education as the holders could get away with, she was Searched by a blue and dropped in the Weyr.  She learned fast, and knew what she wanted.  
  
So when the baby queen's egg split into three sharp pieces, she was right there.  Two other girls and a boy jostled for places beside her, in the little queen's eyesight.  
  
The baby dragon seemed confused, her head wavering back and forth.  Later, Jalanna would realize that she was listening to her clutchmates, trying to figure out what they were doing.  Oreth was as smart as Jalanna even right out of the egg, because she figured out right away that the other dragonets were only taken from the hatching grounds and fed once they'd spoken to a human in their mind.  
  
So she did.  The baby queen's eyes turned to the four surrounding her, and after a short wait, Jalanna heard, _You'll do.  My name is Oreth--I'm hungry!_  
  
"Oreth!" Jalanna cried in triumph.  The others mewled their disappointment but went immediately over to the rest of the clutch, to try their luck.  
  
It didn't take long for Jalanna to realize there was something different about her bond with Oreth.  
  
The other weyrlings spoke in hushed, awed voices about Impression, about the constant and unending deep well of love from their dragons.  Jalanna spoke to Oreth, and they were--friends, she supposed, as much as anyone could be friends with another species--but Oreth didn't love her from the first moment.  She and Oreth were puzzled by the others, dragonets and weyrlings alike.  They sat one evening and sussed it out together.  Jalanna, who knew hard truths from very young, asked the important question: _If I died, would you go_ between _and never come back?_   Oreth replied, _No_.  
  
Oreth came to love her, and Jalanna came to love her dragon, but the bond others spoke of didn't exist.  
  
Four years later and Oreth is full grown, restless, eyes churning.  Jalanna stands on the ledge of her weyr, waiting while the weyr fire-lizards seek out bronzes far and wide for her queen's first mating flight.  Jalanna loves her new life, loves the power and the luxury, the agency to do as she wishes.  Not to be lazy, no, but to choose her own work.  To choose how to excel--and excel she does.  Bronze riders and even ambitious browns would come from both continents to fly her queen, to win the right to court her rider.  
  
"What are we doing?" she whispers.  
  
"All we can do," P'len replies from behind her.  The older rider puts his hands on her shoulders, and Jalanna wonders. Are they doing all they can?  P'len's Tigith is Oreth's father, the only bronze who won't fly.  Jalanna learned only last year that Tigith is like Oreth--unImpressed.  P'len has a rockier relationship with his bronze than Jalanna and Oreth have, but they'd kept it quiet.  P'len had introduced Jalanna to two of his clutchmates, whose dragons were also unImpressed, and another who rode the brown who'd sired them, unImpressed as well.  
  
"There's no telling how long it's been happening," P'len said, when they first found each other.  Their dragons had known all along.  At least Jalanna knew now why Oreth liked to sun herself with them.  "Just a few, in a few clutches.  There's no record of it anywhere.  Nondragonriders--well, they like dragons fine, when they come with dragonriders.  If they had any idea . . . if other dragonriders had any idea . . ." he trailed off.  "And I do love Tigith.  I won't let anything happen to him."  
  
Now he stands with Jalanna, his hands on her shoulders while her queen screeches and bounds to kill, to blood.  She's seen other queen riders when their dragons set off on a mating flight, subsumed in the joy, forcing their will on their dragons.  Oreth doesn't listen to Jalanna when she begs her friend to blood her kills, but she does listen to Tigith, her father.  
  
She values the dragon over her rider.  Such a thing has never happened before, as far as any of them know.  
  
"It's too late to stop it, anyway," P'len says.  "She's the first unImpressed queen we know of.  Her clutch . . ."  
  
Jalanna watches her best friend gleam in the sunlight, beautiful and fierce and deadly.  One day, when there were more like her, she would be untouchable.  Now, with just the few, the holders and other riders could easily kill her or sterilize her.  
  
A faint echo of Oreth's pride and thrill comes to Jalanna, and she narrows her eyes.  Impressed or not, Oreth is the only being on all Pern who has ever been on her side.  She shrugs P'len's hands off her shoulders.  Jalanna won't let her down.  
  
"Her clutch will change things," Jalanna says, her voice firm.  Most of the bronze riders who'd stumbled over to her when their dragons took to the air are dazed and glaze-eyed.  Jalanna searches the crowd for one, just one, clear-eyed rider--  
  
\--and finds him.  
  
Young, younger than her, even.  Still wearing his flying leathers, so likely from far away.  He looks up and meets her eyes, and his face blanks in shock.  
  
Jalanna feels her face quirk into a half-smile and closes her eyes, reaching for Oreth.  She finds her friend still far ahead of her pursuers, gleeful and powerful.  
  
 _Find this one's dragon_.  Jalanna sends a picture of the clear-eyed young man.  
  
 _Why should I?_ Oreth demands.  
  
 _He's like you_ , Jalanna says, smug.  
  
Oreth sings excitement and pleasure and thanks in her mind.  _He still has to catch me first!_  
  
 _Of course, love_ , Jalanna says, then lets her connection go.  
  
When she opens her eyes, the young man is standing next to her.  "Your _queen_ \--?"  
  
She smiles.  "She'll find your--bronze?"  
  
"Neneth."  He nods.  "Their clutch . . ."  
  
"We'll protect them," Jalanna says, in a tone that would brook no argument.  "We'll find the unImpressed, and we'll help, and we'll keep their secret.  There aren't enough of them yet."  
  
P'len and Neneth's rider look at her with awe tinged in fear.  She allows it.  Oreth rescued her, even without Impression.  Jalanna wouldn't let Oreth's descendents be abused the way she had, or killed, or sterilized.  
  
Then Oreth is in her mind, sharing her triumph, and Jalanna and Neneth's rider gasp as one as their dragons find each other.  Jalanna drags him into her weyr.  
  
After all, humans exist without dragons.  Dragons should be able to exist without humans.

**Author's Note:**

> Even reading the Pern books the first time round, oh those many years ago, I never thought it was fair that the dragons were tied to their humans when they were obviously just as smart, if differently smart. The fire-lizards aren't, which means the dragon's dependence on humans was deliberately engineered into them.
> 
> So I wrote a story about a woman who wouldn't stand for it, because her dragon was her best friend, and they chose to be allies. I suspect that Jalanna and Oreth are going to go down in Pernese history either as traitors, or as great leaders, depending on how their plans go.
> 
> I also wrote it very quickly, so if you spot any errors, please let me know!


End file.
